Friday, July 13, 2012

Long Day And Night

I woke up extremely exhausted but
ready to take on the morning ahead. We had this competition where all the
groups had to sing a top 40 song to one of the proctors. The first 3 groups who
did this first would be awarded house points.

The night before, our proctor
planned the whole thing out; two girls would grab Allison (the proctor) once
she got her breakfast and all the rest of us would come out, surprise her with
a few posters and sing for her. In the end, we were the first ones to sing to
her, after barely going before a group that was going to sing to her as well. I
admit, it was a little embarrassing, but it was really fun.

Class today day was a little different
than usual. After we finished the film from yesterday, “And the Band Played On”
we had a class discussion about the social issues of the film. Once again we
were put into groups to discuss one of these social aspects and our group
talked about the media aspect of the film. We all decided that the media was
extremely reluctant to screen anything about AIDS. AIDS was first thought to be
caused by gay people, so the press ignored anything and everything with the
name ‘gay’ on it.

There were also other elements in
the film that I found pretty terrible about our society today. Many places, like
the blood banks, were unwilling to do anything about the AIDS virus in their
blood because there was not enough evidence to prove that the AIDS virus was
transmitted through blood transfusions. Although you do need evidence to prove
such a thing, the fact the people were dying after getting blood from the banks
was good enough for proof. The only reason these facilities decided doing
anything about AIDS was because they did not want to lose money. It seems that
these companies only concern was money, and not human lives. All this made me
realize that ALL social aspects influence drugs and science in general.

In the Seminar Room

After our discussion, we all left to
the Vanderbilt Research Facility – something we haven’t done yet. We were going
there to hear a seminar taught by Sean B. Seymore. He was some sort of drug
patent lawyer and we spent the time there to lean about the patenting of drugs.
We learned everything; from the invention process, prosecution, and
enforcement. In all honesty though, this part of science does not interest me
as much because it has to do a lot about the legal process of science.

The beautiful cieling of Wyatt Hall

Once class ended, we went to the
Wyatt Hall, where all the Arête classes would do a presentation for everyone.
All the classes were pretty entertaining to watch, with the Dance around the
World class being my favorite. All the dancers were pretty good after dancing
for only a week and I really enjoyed the Bollywood-style dancing going on. This
really makes me excited for my next Arête class: Glee which I believe involves
both singing and dancing.

Waiting for the show to begin...

Later that day, we got ready to go to
the Glow-in-the-Dark Dance in the Wyatt Hall. I usually don’t dance, so I wasn’t
sure if I was going to enjoy it as much. I was totally wrong though. The dance
was so much fun! We danced and jumped around until our feet hurt; that ended up
being around 9:45 though.

Ready for the dance!

Tomorrow will be the beginning of my
first weekend at VSA and I am looking forward to what’s in store for tomorrow. I
heard a baseball game is on the list! I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow then.

No comments:

Post a Comment

World Stats

Page Views

Contributors

THE COURSES WE'LL BE TAKING

For a 3 week period between July 8th thru 27th we will be taking the following courses:

Lived Religion: The Abrahamic Faiths

Chris will dig deeper into the study of the monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and have the opportunity to explore local religious communities to learn more about the practices of these different faiths and open their minds to three of the most widely practiced religions around the world.

Pharmacology: How Drugs Work

Yessenia and Hannah Lee will study the origins, properties, and effects of prescription and non-prescription drugs. By visiting campus labs Yessenia and her classmates will examine an array of subjects such as exactly how insulin regulates blood levels and the actual process of discovering new drugs

Yessenia will also be able to examine and discuss the moral and sociological dilemmas and controversies involving the characteristics of different medicines and how their nature has affected our world throughout the years. Yessenia is thrilled to study this exciting and intriguing class that will help her gain new perspectives on the drugs used on a daily basis.

Mystery Writing

Narges will learn about the elements of mystery writing in various works of literature. She will read classic and contemporary examples of mysteries and produce an original mystery story of her own. Narges looks forward to learning more about mysteries and adapting a new style of writing. Narges hopes to produce a thrilling mystery story rivaling those of her favorite mystery writer: the one and only Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.